


Loss Ficlet: Afghanistan

by missclairebelle



Series: Loss (Ficlets) [10]
Category: Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-17
Updated: 2018-03-17
Packaged: 2019-04-03 16:33:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14000148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missclairebelle/pseuds/missclairebelle
Summary: TW: War violence.





	Loss Ficlet: Afghanistan

**Author's Note:**

> The prompt for week 7 of @gotham-ruaidh’s writing workshop is:
> 
> Woe is all I possess
> 
> This is based in the same universe as the multi-part hurt/comfort fic Loss, but is in a different timeline than that story. 
> 
> This is different than my usual, but the threads of it have been an in my head for Jamie’s backstory in the Loss universe since the first parts written on an airplane. The prompt pushed me into writing it.
> 
> I think a fair amount of Jamie’s personality and being (in the books and show) are informed by his time as a soldier. 

 

**Loss Ficlet: Afghanistan**

**TW: War violence.**

“How did this happen?” I asked, running two fingers along the length of the scar that gashed Jamie’s thigh in two. We were under the covers, touching each other lazily, sated and sleepy and warm.

Jamie swallowed, bringing his hand to my face and resting it along the curve of my cheek.  His eyes were narrowed and he was searching my face, mouth set in a firm line. The slight smile that had been playing on his lips not even moments before had disappeared altogether. I furrowed my brow in response.

“I’m sorry. Did I cross a line?”

Jamie shook his head just slightly, the movement barely noticeable. His thumb stroked my cheekbone a few times. His fingers ghosted over my face and cupped the back of my head, his thumb finally coming to rest on my temple.  

“I was in the British Army. I went to Afghanistan… just after university. A few times. The last time… 2011… I was there for fifteen months… until… _that_ happened.” He tilted his head down slightly in the direction of his thigh. His eyes focused on the blankets over our legs only momentarily before he met my eyes again.

“Oh.”  I hadn’t expected his answer. I was stunned for a moment about just how little we knew about one another.  Most of our discoveries were fun and playful, not serious. I stilled my hand between his hip and the scar.

Jamie’s eyes closed and his voice was soft.

“I went to Kabul to train the new government’s soldiers – it was a mess. Boys. Old men. Farmers. Merchants. Most had never picked up a weapon. We were on a practice expedition. We drove over an IED in an ill-equipped vehicle on a joint trainin’ mission with some Americans... Marines. I took a piece of shrapnel to the leg and one to the stomach. The body armor stopped it from tearin’ through my guts.”

“Christ,” I breathed, staying as still as possible. I was almost afraid to move. He was looking at me but wasn’t looking _at me_ now.

“I had been talkin’ to this kid - he was testin’ his English out on me. He was teachin’ me a few words in Pashto. The kid’s screams were like nothin’ I’d ever heard… or care to hear again. But I _do_. I hear him screamin’ sometimes. I crawled to him. I dinna ken why I went to him, maybe because he was so young, he was closer than my own men. Maybe I crawled to him to save him. Maybe to shut him up. His chest was like raw meat, filled with grit, and his mouth was bleedin’ in short, syrupy gushes as he coughed. I remember takin’ his hands... they were dirty and so swollen... like when someone’s filled a glove up like a balloon. I muttered those words I knew in Pashto and I told him about Scotland. The green and the mountains and the fog and the flowers in spring. I told him about Jen and Ian and their bairns. I didna know enough ‘bout his home or family to tell him ‘bout his own.”

Jamie stopped, tightening his grip slightly on the back of my skull. It wasn’t painful, but it was different than his usual touch. I did not need to be inside of his head to know that he was _seeing_  that kid now.

“The gunfire, it wouldna stop, Claire –” he paused and then raised his voice – “ _POP POP POP POP POP POP_ ” – and then returned to his usual tone. The subject matter’s effect on him was revealed only faintly by his elevated respiration rate. “The gunfire was chatterin’ and the men I was trainin’ were in total disarray. I couldna move, couldna _lead_  like I was meant to.”

I swallowed back, my mouth so dry it felt gritty and my throat like sandpaper.

“I ken now that it was an ambush. I laid there with that kid, our blood all mingled together… oozin’ our lives together like we were makin’ a blood vow. I couldna get up, Claire. I tried. I couldna even feel the fuckin’ leg, but I couldna _just move_ to help my men.”

His eyes refocused. His hands had gone clammy on my face. He loosened his grip on me.

“You canna ken what that’s like, to have the trainin’. To be that fuckin’ _helpless_.”

Jamie’s words were dry – like he did not have saliva left. I couldn’t stop myself from jumping when he wrapped his left thigh – the one that started this all – around my waist and hitched my body closer to him.

“That kid… the one I had been talkin’ to... had the biggest, brownest eyes. He had the longest eyelashes I’ve ever seen and looked like he was wearin’ eyeliner or somethin’ along them. He was beautiful, almost like a girl. He was someone’s bairn. He was probably fifteen.”

I could feel my heart beating in my throat. I wanted to touch him, to lay my palms on his chest, but I stayed still. His eyes were distant again, unfocused, set on some pinpoint that I couldn’t see.

“When one of ‘em came for me I blew a hole into his stomach with my pistol. He fell forward.  He was fightin’ me for my gun. I had to stop him. I put a knife between his ribs… right here.” Jamie’s left hand came down and pressed between my ribs. It wasn’t painful, but his fingers were sharp in a way he had never touched me. He moved his hand to my belly. “His head rested here when he died on me… eyes open.”

Jamie was looking at me now, _really_ looking at me, like he was searching for a response. I couldn’t help it. I took his hand from my belly and kissed the palm (sticky with sweat, cold) gently, placing it over my heart.

“He was leakin’ blood onto my gear. Ye can see the life leave someone’s eyes, Claire. Did ye ken that? This guy, I felt a last shudderin’ breath, and then silence. And the fuckin’ _relief_ I felt. It was unimaginable. The _power_ inherent in the fact that I had lived. So we laid there, the three of us. Him seepin’ blood into me and my heart pushin’ my blood out of my thigh, the boy, me. All three of us, bloody disasters.”

He fell silent for a few moments and closed his eyes.  When he opened his eyes there were lines of tears along his lower lashes – not enough to fall, but enough to catch the light filtering through my open bedroom window.

“That was the only time I killed someone. And it was worse than I’d ever imagined it would be. It’s one thing to say ye’d kill to save yerself. It’s entirely another to do it. All of the killin’ I’d seen before that was by laser-guided missiles and snipers and jets.”

Breath was trapped in my lungs. I was having a hard time reconciling the story I had built for the scar (Jamie on skis versus a fence and others) with the reality ( _literal_ war).

“The British Army dinna train us on the smell – the blood and gunsmoke and shit and bodies in the sun, the rotting flesh. It sticks with ye, ye ken? I was in Germany for some time after, healin’ up, physical therapy, listenin’ to those nurses and doctors tell me how _lucky_ I was, how _brave_ I had been while my men were slaughtered, eatin’ food out of prepackaged cups and baggies. I was fuckin’ pissed at those baggies of proportioned food.”

His fingers crept up my chest over my collar bones and tangled in a curl.

“When I got back to Scotland I went to Lallybroch. Ian held me while I cried like a bairn. I was angry at _everythin’_ and _everyone_ except Ian and Jen. I didna know why I cried. I didna speak for a week. Ian was in Iraq for awhile, ya ken? His leg… that’s what happened. IED. Different war, same shit.”

I nodded. I had known that. Jenny had whispered it to me once when Ian was sitting at the dinner table, a far-off look in his eyes. Jamie had rested his hand on Ian’s shoulder. The slight squeeze and look he had given his brother-in-law took on a new significance in light of what Jamie was telling me now.

“Ian understood the blind rage, the pain of it, the gravity of havin’ to take a human life, even when that human is tryin’ his damnedest to take yer’s. Jen, God bless her, made me eat again and poured me whisky in the night when I woke screamin’ and sweatin’ and thrashin’ ‘bout in my bed. In those months after I got home, she probably saved my life a thousand times. She made me do my exercises and gave me those damned beautiful bairns to distract me.”

“Jamie,” I whispered, bringing my hand from his thigh up to his chest. His heart was pounding.

“I ‘spose ye’re never goin’ to think of me the same then,” he concluded, his clouded blue eyes clearing and finally looking at me again. “I didna want to burden ye with it… with knowin’. Now ye’ll never be able to see me the same, I ‘spose.”

“I won’t, but not in a bad way. It helps me… understand you.”

He shook his head, his nostrils flaring slightly. I couldn’t tell if he was angry or if I’d said the wrong thing. I wasn’t sure there was a _right_ thing to say.

“Before ye get any further in with me, ye should ken that I moved out inta a cave – a literal cave, not some figurative cave of emotion –“ he laughed mirthlessly before continuing – “I grew a mad fuckin’ beard afterward. Just for the first summer back. I kept wakin’ Young Jamie and wee Maggie with my screamin’ at all hours of the night… night terrors they called ‘em, and I didna want to take the drugs they gave me and didna want those kids ruined for life because of it.”

I suddenly realized that I knew the meaning of the word “heartbreak.” I felt the muscles in my chest tearing apart for him, the costal cartilage connected my eighth, ninth, and tenth ribs ripping free, my heart seared as if by a poker and melting free of its arteries.

“When autumn came I agreed to take the drugs… Effexor and Ativan.  Still take the Ativan sometimes. But that autumn… Jenny came to me, cryin’ like mad, sayin’ she couldna lose any more of me, that Jamie and Maggie needed me. That Ian needed me, she needed me. I moved back into the house, got a job at the distillery, got the meds straightened to shut my fuckin’ head up.”

He cleared his throat and removed his hands from me, burying them deep in his hair and disentangling our legs.

“Eventually I moved down to Edinburgh and started workin’ at the agency… doin’ what I do now… gettin’ be to be creative, figurin’ out coy ways to make rich white men richer, makin’ people buy shit they dinna need.”

I tried like hell to keep my countenance even, to be clinical. I did not want to scare him off the confession with an overt show of emotion. He adjusted again and moved his hands towards me, fingers digging deeply into my hair, pulling me closer to him. I didn’t need to ask what his diagnosis was. I could figure it out on my own just from what he was telling me.

“I’ve never said any of this out loud, Claire. I mean, other than to doctors… therapists. Ian and Jen were there, I didna need to explain it to them. It hijacked my entire personality. I was on autopilot then. I’m still comin’ ‘round to who I used to be before it all.”  I moved my hand over to his face. His chin and throat were dotted with stubble. I tried to imagine the auburn hair growing into a beard. I couldn’t. “Now is your chance to cut and run, Sassenach. I’d understand.”

“James Fraser. No. I’m all the way in with you already. Nothing – not this or much else – will change that.”  My fingers ghosted over his lips and chin. The words left my mouth, true and unexpected before I could stop them. “I love you.”

I meant it.  I had never said it before, but I had known it for a long time. At least a few weeks. I did not say it because I felt obligated. I said it because it was true. He had whispered it to me a few nights earlier, thinking I was sleeping. I had opened my eyes and his face had burned red. He had whispered, “ _it’s true_.” Now, at my confession, his lips lifted ever so slightly at the left corner and he pressed his mouth into mine.

“I do; I’m not just saying it. I love you.”

We rested there for a moment – eyes open, breath mingling – before he said, “I ken ye do, Sassenach. That’s why I told ye all of this.”

* * *


End file.
